Examples

Sous vide is also very useful for seasoning or marinating meat — the process transfers flavor so efficiently that even artisan-bacon producers, for example, brine and flavor their pork bellies in a vacuum.

Ustream is one of the more popular services for streaming live vide from a webcam, and Jane’s nightmare was a technologically updated twist on one of the older slasher movie tropes, with a laptop and internet connection replacing the telephone clutched in the shaking hand of the the terrified victim as a friend shouts “he’s behind you!”

In France sous vide is a part of everyday life for discriminating shoppers, who buy haute cuisine meals from gleaming white-tiled frozen-food markets, and don’t hesitate to serve them at elegant parties.

There is precedent in this genre — science writer Harold McGee has published popular books explaining kitchen science, and chefs Thomas Keller and Ferran Adri à have written about sous vide and other techniques of avant-garde gastronomy — but nothing reaches the scope and magnitude of Mr. Myhrvold's book.